


freedom will carry me

by nymja



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Side Rey, Established Relationship, F/M, allusions to slavery, light side ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-14 14:18:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13591869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: “The Sith had a rule,” she states, knowing he will understand her implication.“So you just become the Master,” he says with a scowl. Disappointed, she realizes. He is disappointed in her. It’s a strange feeling-- because someone has to care, to be disappointed.“No. I was a slave once.” Her eyes meet his. “I won’t be making others.”“Then what will you make?”“Something new,” she promises. “And I’d like for you to do it with me.”--for the prompt: AU where Ben Solo never turned and Rey is Snoke's apprentice.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alethnya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alethnya/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Alethnya! I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you enjoy it :D
> 
>  **warnings** this chapter for short scenes where rey's parents are alcoholic/neglectful

Everything changes with one decision.  
  
\--  
  
Luke stands just outside his nephew’s hut, his hand at his waist and a frown drawn between his brows. The Dark awaits for both of them, curling unseen around limbs and breaths and thoughts. For a moment, he considers opening the door, to verify what it is that he feels inside him like a counterweight. There is _something_ there, after all, something that pulls at Ben and by extension those around him. Luke, himself, is not immune to it. Feels himself called just as much as anyone else. It troubles him.  
  
Luke rests the flat of his hand against the metal. It is cool under his touch. What is more responsible? To go in now? To wait? What does it mean to pass judgment on a boy who is asleep? What does it make _Luke_ , if he goes inside? Because there is a part of him that knows his actions would be partially selfish--an attempt to stop the draw for himself and his nephew.  
  
The stars overhead are bright, and there is an impossible stillness in the night. He hears the silence of peace, and his fingertips curl against the door until his fingers lift from it.  
  
He should go in. Wake his nephew. Talk to him.  
  
The Dark says nothing to Luke’s questions, only watches and waits like a viper about to strike-- a moment about to change without any hope of correction.  
  
Finally, Luke sighs. His touch drops from the door.  
  
He turns around and heads back the way he came. Destinies are changed for it.  
  
But the Dark is stalled, not defeated. And it is patient. And it will find a way, always.  
  
\--  
  
Across the universe, a girl wakes because her insides feel sharp. Her small, grubby hands clutch against a belly beginning to protrude from starvation. Feet clad in sand-filled boots kick out helplessly against a threadbare rug, hair sticks to the back of her neck as it falls out of its three-bun style.  
  
“ _Buir…_ ” she moans, rolling onto her side and curling up tight. “Food _…_ please... _”_  
  
Across from her, her father--her _buir_ \--snorts, sending her feet a hard kick to get them to be still. Before him is a low table, strewn with mismatched bowls that were once full of drink but are now empty.  
  
“What? _”_ He grumbles, swaying in his seat. Her mother is already asleep, snoring loudly on the ground by his knee. “Shut up! Sleep!”  
  
He swats at something she can’t see and he can’t hit before him, before he throws his head back and laughs deeply. “Mishuk gotal’u meshuroke, pako kyore!”  
  
The girl rolls onto her other side, so she doesn’t have to watch him drink away the rest of their food.  
  
In the low light of their hovel, Kira hears something whisper to her. Something sweet and burning, that makes the hunger in her belly into something finer-- like a blade.  
  
It brings the Dark before her eyes, and in it, Kira finds a way to fall asleep.  
  
\--  
  
Ben trains in the Force, and he doesn’t miss the way his uncle hesitates before sparring. How he seems to be holding back when he explains tenets of the Code or abilities Ben can learn from the Light. How there’s always an edge of mistrust, lingering at the corners of their relationship of Master and Student, but more importantly, Uncle and Nephew.  
  
\--  
  
Her parents are gone more often than they’re home. She learns how to scavenge for food, to steal things from the market so she has something to eat later. To fight the bigger kids who try to take it from her.  
  
She learns the hard way that she has to hide her hoard. That something as pathetic as one packet of vegbread will be taken and sold by her mother; that her father will scream and throw things at the walls because she didn’t give it to them in the first place.  
  
She learns anger, when she goes to bed hungry again and again despite her work.  
  
\--  
  
Ben is Knighted two years after the decision his Uncle didn’t make. The ceremony has too much pomp and circumstance for Jedi tradition, but he knows that he’s not there as himself. He’s a symbol, the first Jedi to be fully trained in decades.  
  
His parents are there, applauding, when he takes his vows and ignites his grandfather’s lightsaber. It’s the first time he’s seen either of them in months.  
  
\--  
  
They try to drug and sell her. The Dark warns her of it before it happens. The whispers in it tell her not to drink the milk her father has finally managed to bring home. That it will cloud her mind and dull her memories. That she needs to be ready to fight, to resist. To break her chains.  
  
It’s her mother that strikes a bargain with a scrap collector. Kira’s life is worth two jugs of Corellian firewater, and she keeps her anger under her skin as her mother pretends to cry and be sorrowful when she passes her to the arms of a stranger.  
  
The second Unkar Plutt’s hands rest on her shoulders, Kira picks up a piece of metal from the ground and slashes at him with it. It tears his skin, orange blood splattering on the sand as she screams and bares her teeth and slashes at him again.  
  
She won’t be sold. She won’t be chained.  
  
As soon as he falls over, she starts running and doesn’t look back.  
  
\--  
  
In a room trillions of miles and years away, the creature that will be known as the Supreme Leader raises his head. He lets out a wheeze of a laugh, the scar tissue on his face rearranging into something like a grin.  
  
“Ah,” he whispers greedily to himself, fingers digging into the armrests of his throne.  
  
“There is another.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -The phrase Rey's father says is "pressure makes gems, ease makes decay," which is a Mandalorian proverb. Included just because I think it'd be totes cool if Rey was descended from exiled Mandalorians
> 
> -The name "Kira" comes from the concept artbook for _The Force Awakens_ , where the original incarnation of her character was named that. I like to headcanon that is her real name / Rey is a nickname. Plus Kira Ren sounded better then Rey Ren :|


	2. Chapter 2

He dreams about her.   
  
It’s not always the same. Sometimes she hates him, really  _ hates  _ him. Her teeth are bared and a bellow emits from deep within her stomach as she slashes at him. In those dreams, he can only spend his time running-- lifting his arm, crawling away with his boot heels dug into the sand (it’s always sand). In those dreams, as much as he doesn’t want to admit it, part of him is afraid of her. No, that’s not right. Part of him is afraid  _ for  _ her. And that he knows  _ exactly  _ how she feels in those dreams, that unrestrained fury and pain and the need to destroy. He understands all too well…and yet, in those dreams--the ones where she hates him and is trying to kill him--he’s still compelled to stay. He runs, but he never leaves. Never tries to wake himself up. Because there’s a thrill to it, to the way he can hear his heart pound in his ears and the shallow breaths he has when he wakes up. It’s addictive.

And there are dreams where she lets him fight back. They duel, him with his grandfather’s lightsaber and her with the ancient Sith design--the one with the blades on both ends. Neither of them ever win in these dreams, because they never finish. He wakes up with his body aching and bruising and there’s a tightness in his stomach that can only mean one thing.

Then there’s the dreams she’s afraid of. Where they do nothing but sit or lay next to each other, his arms always around her and her body always framed by his. They talk, every once in a while, but the words escape him every time he wakes up. But words don’t matter, not to them. Not when they can feel each other’s emotions and hear each other’s thoughts. She hates these dreams, he knows that without a doubt. Because these dreams are always followed next by the dreams where she’s screaming at him in the desert, pain etched into her face and lightsaber ignited at her hip.

He wakes up this morning, and his stomach is tight. He sighs, lifting his head and then slamming it back into the pillow below him. Above him on the ceiling, he traces the mismatched panels of his father’s ship with his eyes and tries not to-

_ You’re doing it again. _

-think too much about her.

“You are, too,” he mutters back. The room is empty, but he hears her as though she were laying next to him in bed, her lips right outside his ear. The thought makes his stomach tighten further, and he begins to count the screws in the ceiling.

_ What was it, this time?   _ She chides.

Even though his eyes are open, and he’s looking at the ceiling, he can see her. She’s perched on top of a shipping crate of some kind, her body in a squat. Her arms, wrapped in black leather strips up to the elbow, are resting on her knees and outstretched. She’s staring at something intently below her, but he can’t see it. Whenever this happens, they can only see each other. And maybe there’s a silent truce at that, because he never tries to press beyond those fuzzy edges. To his knowledge, she hasn’t either.

“You don’t care about the answer to that question,” he says with an edge of annoyance, agitation.

In his mind, she tilts her head to the side, a fall of brown hair spilling over at the motion. It covers a particularly nasty scar on her bare shoulder. He gave that to her, two years ago in a duel on Dantooine, as the Resistance was evacuating their base.

_ Do I still make you uncomfortable? Even after everything? _

“You know you do.”

_ I’m not trying to. _

“That makes it worse.”

_ Because we’re enemies?   _ She sounds genuinely curious.

With a growl of frustration, Ben turns onto his side, and there she is. Kira adjusts, so she’s sitting cross-legged next to his bed. She rests her chin on the heel of her hand, staring at him.

He blinks a few times, but she doesn’t leave and he doesn’t bother to cover his bare torso with the sheet tangled around his legs. “I don’t think of you as an enemy,” he answers bluntly.

Kira frowns at that, her lips pressed tightly together. This time, her voice isn’t a brush against his mind as she speaks out loud. “You should.” She bites into her thumb nail. “Your Resistance certainly does.”

Still lying on his side, he looks up at her. He doesn’t know if he’s annoyed or not that her eyes never go lower than his face. “Only because you keep killing them,” he states dryly.

Kira looks away at that. “Yes, well.” She runs a hand through her unbound hair, and Ben wants so badly to run his fingers through it in her stead. “They’re getting in the way of galactic peace.”

He snorts at that, and Kira’s eyes narrow in return. “Who’s peace? Snoke’s?”

She scowls. “The Supreme Leader is-”

“He’s a tyrant and he’ll bleed more planets dry.”

“And your Resistance is that much better?” The hand in her hair moves toward the crown of it, and starts to twist the top half into a single bun. It must be early, where she is, if she’s just getting ready. “This conflict would have been  _ over  _ if your mother didn’t-”

“Don’t,” he bites out in a harsh tone he rarely uses around her, “talk about my mother.”

She stares at him, her naturally hazel eyes flashing briefly to yellow before she exhales. “Loyalty to blood will only cost you, Ben.” She says his name like that because she knows the effect it has on him. He wishes she didn’t.

“Snoke teach you that?”

“No,” she says bitterly, looking away.

That catches his attention, and Ben props himself up on an arm. His voice goes softer, as he catches her stray thoughts and emotions in the Force. “You’re talking about your parents.”

“Not with you,” she snaps.

Before he can reply, her image flickers out and the bond between them is slammed shut.

Ben growls in frustration, before he lets his body collapse back into the bed, grabbing the sheet to pull over his head.

\--

“Late start, kid?” His father asks him from across the mess, his body in a slouch as he dishearteningly pours out some protein mush from the dispenser.

“None of your business,” Ben grumbles back, grabbing the bowl before Han can put his own spoon in it.

“Hey!”

“Get faster, old man,” is Ben’s only defense as he starts eating it and Han glares.

He turns, filling a new bowl and muttering under his breath, “Can’t wait until you’re Luke’s problem again.”

The comment is meant as a joke, but as soon as it’s said, Han looks like he wants to take it back. Ben’s hold on the spoon tightens and his shoulders hunch.

“Kid-”

“Fortunately for you,” he says bitterly. “It’s only another two hours.”

Han instantly looks apologetic. “You know I don’t mean it like that.”

He shoves the still-full bowl forward, climbing out of the bench.

“Ben-!”

He ignores him, exhaling through his bottom teeth and heading toward the rec area. Maybe Chewbacca will spar with him.

\--

Two hours, and several bruises from his honorary uncle later, _The_ _ Falcon  _ is lowering itself down to the surface of Yavin IV. Ben stands behind the pilot and co-pilot’s seats, an elbow resting on the back of Chewie’s. At the sight of the famous freighter, several of Luke’s younger students run out to greet them. He sees a few of the students he’s been training, their arms waving above their heads in big arches.

Chewbacca, in the co-pilot’s seat, looks over his shoulder and lets out a questioning growl.

Ben rolls his eyes. “I’m not waving to them.”

A low whine.

“I  _ know  _ they’re kids.”

Another growl.

“I will suit myself, thanks.”

Han, who has been grumpily silent since Ben’s outburst, sends him a slow look. “Glad to be home?”

Ben bristles at the last word, eyes locked dead ahead. “Probably as happy as you are to be leaving it.”

Han frowns, then scoffs, turning forward and toggling a few switches that Ben knows for a fact aren’t hooked up to anything. “Go buckle up, kid. We’re landing.”

Ben turns, the last thing he sees out the viewport is his uncle’s grey-clad figure emerging from the temple’s entrance. To him, Ben gives a hesitant wave, which Luke hesitantly returns.

\--

“You’re a celebrity.”

Ben almost trips over his own feet, pitching forward as his form is interrupted by her sudden voice. The sun is rising in the distance, making the sky of Yavin IV purple. He turns, and Kira stands there, impassive. She’s dressed in her full costume: black boots that go to her mid-shin, black wrappings that go to the tops of her thighs (he has  _ thought  _ about those wrappings before). A black skirt with high slits and shorts underneath for optimum movement, a black sleeveless tunic and the customary arm wrappings he has never seen her without. She stands with her arms crossed over her chest, and he imagines her standing somewhere like a bridge or in the middle of a command center, staring out a viewport.

He lets out a last breath, disengaging his lightsaber as he stands and steps next to her. She doesn’t move, but he feels the heat from her arms. “What?”

Her fingers are pressing tightly into her arms. “The Supreme Leader thinks you’re worthy enough to be a priority.”

“We weren’t before?”

“Not we.  _ You. _ ” She sends him the quickest glance, and is equally quick to bring her attention back to whatever it is that’s directly in front of her.

He isn’t fooled. They’re never fooled with one another.

“You’re worried.” Ben frowns, because he’s not sure he even believes it himself. “About me.”

“I just thought you should know,” she says tightly. “In case I have to kill you.”

Ben scowls. “Considerate of you.”

“That’s all it is. Consideration.”

“Don’t lie to yourself, Kira.”

She turns, stalking down what might be a hall or the length of the bridge. He follows, his longer strides allowing him to keep up easily.

“He’s wasting you,” Ben states firmly, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “Using you.”

“We’re all using each other in this galaxy,” she spits, looking dead ahead. Her cape and skirt move in soft waves behind her.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. You’re nothing to Snoke-”

“But not to you?” She cuts off caustically, a finger outstretching and pressing what Ben assumes is a lift button or a door panel. It’s not the first time they’ve had conversations like this. But he senses it might be the last.

She steps forward, and he follows. From the way she looks up, he guesses this to be a lift.

“Kira,” he whispers. “You don’t want to kill me.”

“What I want doesn’t matter,” she says coldly. “It also doesn’t mean that I  _ couldn’t _ .”

He steps forward, until he’s near looming over her. Her upward glare means she’s now face to face with him, the two impossibly close. One of his hands goes to the side of her neck, resting there gently as his thumb traces her jawline.

“Doesn’t it?” he taunts.

“This isn’t  _ Jedi  _ behavior.”

He leans down. “The Jedi are changing.”

Her eyes connect with his, and he sees something in them that he likes. So he brings his mouth down to hers.

It’s not the first time they’ve kissed. Or touched one another. Their connection manifested five years ago, and has only grown stronger as each of them mastered their respective side of the Force. But there’s something more desperate this time, and he’s pleasantly surprised when he feels Kira’s fingers dig into the fabric of his henley shirt, twisting it in her grip as she presses herself against him. The hand that's not on her neck goes to the small of her back. He slips it under the fabric of her tunic, feeling the warmth of her bare skin under his calloused palm as he parts her lips with his tongue.

She grabs his hair and pulls on it. His stomach tightens again. He drops his hands to grab at her waist, to lift her up so she can wrap her legs around his hips-

The lift must stop. Kira shoves him away. He feels his back hit against the metal as though it were actually there, even though on Yavin he just stumbles over the empty training ground.

“Don’t tell me where you are,” she demands. “Don’t try to find me. Don’t think about me.”

“What?”

“ _ Don’t _ ,” she snarls.

As he tries to grab her arm, she storms out of the lift. Then shuts their bond once again.

Ben slumps against a training dummy, feeling unsatisfied and disoriented and unfull.

\--

The next day, his father and Chewbacca leave for the next Resistance supply run. Their goodbye dinner is a normal affair, the little ones crowded around his father’s knee demanding stories or rides on Chewbacca’s shoulders.

Ben excuses himself early, oblivious to the way Han’s eyes soften with sadness or the way he brushes off Chewbacca’s inquisitive whine. His mind is too preoccupied to bother with addressing a parent he sees a handful of days every standard year. Or rather, his mind is too  _ quiet. _

Because it’s been hours, and the bond is still a muted thing. If he didn’t know any better, he would say it was absent.

But it’s not absent. Because that’s impossible. Because they both tried, (her feverently, him once and then never again) to break it in the beginning and it didn’t work. Because they’ve been in each other for five years. And it wasn’t going to go away and because, now, neither of them wanted it to go away.

Or, at least,  _ he  _ didn’t want it to.

“Where are you?” He demands as soon as he walks into his hut and closes the door behind him.

Silence.

He swears, brushing his hair away from his face in anger. “Kira!”

Nothing, not even a flicker or a brush.

Ben swallows down the panic that is creeping up his throat like a physical thing. He can feel his heart beating harder. His voice breaks, a little, on the syllable he’s only been able to call her once before. It’s an old nickname, one her mother gave her. It means something in her home language, though he hasn’t been able to figure it out and she refuses to tell him.

“...Rey?”

When there is nothing, he yells in frustration and shoves over his desk. His calligraphy tools scatter. Ink spills on his boots and trousers, smears over the floor.

“You don’t get to leave me now!” He screams. “I won’t let you!”

Because he feels it all: Life, Death, Light, Dark. But he doesn’t feel his other half, his balance in the shadow that burns like an inferno--a twin to his own flame in the light.

Ben slams his hand against the wall. “Do you hear me?”

Nothing. His head drops. His nails bite into his palm.

“ _ I’m not giving up! _ ”

\--

And he doesn’t. Not when hours fade into days or days into weeks and then months. Ben spends every moment he’s not training in meditation, trying to find the chain that she had broken between them. He loses sleep, because his dreams are gone, and dark circles engrave themselves under his eyes.

Luke tries to get him to talk about it. Tries prying around the edges of his senses. Ben refuses, he shuts him out. He wonders if Snoke is torturing her, as he has before. If she’s after his parents. If she’s alive. Gradually, Luke stops asking and stops assigning him missions.

Then, one night, seven standard months after she shut him out of their bond, he sees her while he is in a console room of the temple.

She’s sitting somewhere, her eyes as darkly circled as his own and a cut running over her bottom lip--as though she’d been punched. Her hands are bound before her, resting on her thighs. He doesn’t see her lightsaber at her side.

“Where have you been?!” He demands, loud enough that she winces slightly.

“That doesn’t matter,” she says in a level voice.

“You-!”

“Instead, you should ask me where I’m going,” she whispers. Her eyes are dark and focused entirely on him.

Ben’s lips part in confusion. There’s the shrill of a beep behind him, and reluctantly he turns his attention from Kira.

The temple’s atmo sensors are detecting a shuttle descending. There’s a comm from a Resistance cargo hauler patching through.

His eyes go wide as he faces her. “You’re…”

Kira slowly lets her eyes close. “I’ll see you soon.”


	3. Chapter 3

She feels calmer than she ought to, as the shuttle they’ve hauled her onto begins its approach. Kira knows, just from sensing surface feelings, that any of the Resistance soldiers would shoot her without question if it didn’t disobey  _ Leia Organa’s  _ direct orders. The one across from her, in particular, has not stopped scowling or thinking about how easy it would be to sink a blaster round between her eyes.

“It would be harder than you think,” she says, unoffended. She even attempts a friendly smile.

The man startles at the address. “What?”

“Shooting me.”

He pales, then scowls. “I think I could figure it out.”

Kira shrugs. Maybe it’s enough to goad him into trying, but she doubts it. The Resistance is astoundingly loyal to their General. She’ll live to see the Jedi temple, at the very least.

She rotates her wrists. They ache, the restrainers put on too tight even though everyone in this transport knows that they’re only a formality. She should be afraid. Angry, even. But she’s not. This is where she needs to be, and this is what she has to do. She saw it in the Force, a clear path for the first time in her life.

She’s delivered herself to her enemies. All for the chance at convincing Ben. But she doesn’t think she’ll be unsuccessful. Her vision has shown her, and if she searches her feelings, she knows Ben’s intentions better than she knows her own.

Maybe  _ that  _ frightens her.

The transport lurches into a descent, rocking from side to side before finally settling. The door hisses open, and Kira squints at the bright, jungle sun. One soldier grabs her around the bicep, and another on the opposite side. They near-drag her out, into the open. Into the light.

Ben stands there, eyes still wide and lips still parted as he sees her step out with her security detail. She half wonders if he’s changed his expression at all since she told him she was coming.

One of the soldiers steps forward, dropping  _ her  _ lightsaber into  _ his  _ hand. “Kira Ren willingly surrendered herself to our forces on Crait.” The soldier sends her a quick glance, clearly afraid of her. “The General thought it best to send her here for interrogation and imprisonment.”

Their gazes meet. Something in Ben’s hardens.

“If she willingly surrendered,” he starts, his voice betraying his anger. “Why does she have a black eye?”

Kira almost snorts as the soldier to the left of her visibly squirms. But she decides not to. Instead, she plays the role she is supposed to, tilting up her chin in defiance.

“Mostly willingly,” she corrects. There’s a tug at the corner of her mouth that is not quite a smile.

Ben looks at her, brows drawn. His fingers tighten on her lightsaber. “As you know, the Jedi don’t kill prisoners.”

Kira gives a half nod. “I believe the General was counting on it.”

He stares at her, then her cut lip, then her guards. Finally, he exhales and gives a half turn. “Follow me to the cells.”

They do.

\--

The soldiers make themselves scarce almost as soon as the barred door swings shut. Kira rolls her shoulders, effortlessly breaking her restraints with a quirk of her eyebrow. They clatter to the floor, the metal of them catching the torchlight that illuminates the basement halls of the ancient temple.

Kira looks up, eyes tracing the edges of the barred door. “...old,” is all she offers, kicking the bars with the toe of her boot. The sound echoes in the abandoned holding area.

Ben stands on the other side of the cell, arms crossed and a desperate look to him that, despite herself, makes something in her squirm. “What are you doing here?”

She gives the bars another kick. They warp slightly at the contact and dust flies off them in a small cloud. “You know this won’t hold me.”

“Kira.”

She glances at him. The light from the torches cast his long features in dark shadows. He is hunched over now, bracing his weight against her cell door with one of his arms. His forehead rests against the back of it. And he stares at her as though he’s not sure she’s real. Which might be a fair assessment. They haven’t met physically, on the same planet, in almost two years.

When she speaks next, it’s a whisper. “You said you wouldn’t give up on me. Did you mean it?”

His eyes are dark and endless. They remind her of the shadows that would lull her to sleep as a child.

“Yes,” he finally manages. It sounds pained.  _ Good,  _ she thinks at that. Because pain has a lot of gifts to give and strength is one of them.

She walks up to the bars. Slowly, she threads her fingers through his hair, playing with it for a moment.

“Then I’m here for you,” she breathes out. Gentle, because she knows that is what he’ll respond to. What he hungers for.

His eyes flicker up to meet hers. She lets her fingers slide from his hair, and she takes a step back.

“What?” He demands.

Kira takes a steadying breath, and another step back, deeper into the cell and into the shadow.

“Kira, what?” His voice is sharper.

Not looking at him, she turns and sits in a meditation pose. Her back is to him, and she feels his stare between her shoulder blades.

“Kira!”

She doesn’t look. Doesn’t move.

Finally, she hears a clang! against the metal, like a kick or punch, before his footsteps echo down the hall.

Kira inhales, and tries to keep her hands from shaking. He’ll be back. She has to believe that.

\--

When he returns, it’s not how she expected. Her eyes get a full view of his back, bare as it usually is when he sleeps. Except he’s not sleeping--she can tell by the way his muscles tense, by the forward hunch of his shoulders.

“You’re thinking of me again,” she whispers.

It’s always an area of fascination to her, how he feels. She doesn’t know if she understands it, or if she feels the same way. Doesn’t know if she’s capable of feeling the same way, after everything. But there’s something undeniable between them, softer than a chain. Like a thread or a cord. And she reaches for it every time she’s able.

He doesn’t acknowledge her. So she just sits there. Being like this always makes her feel calmer, maybe even at ease. She suspects because there is just as much turbulence within him as there is with her, and perhaps they cancel each other out. He always calls her his balance, and she thinks there might be something to that. It’s why she’s here. It’s why she’s here for  _ him. _

When an hour goes by, and he doesn’t move and doesn’t say anything, Kira climbs into the empty half of the bed next to him. It is an old, lumpy mattress, and the sheets are scratchy--nothing like her quarters on  _ The Finalizer.  _ But it’s better than the ground of her cell and she curls into it. Because he needs to come to her in order for this to work, she keeps her back facing his.

Finally, when she is half asleep, he shifts. One of his arms wraps around her, under the curve of her waist and around her stomach. His long nose brushes against the column of her neck. Kira forces herself to relax against him, to feel his chest at her back and sink into it.

“Do I mean anything to you?” He asks.

Kira’s eyes land on the arm that’s outstretched above her head. Curious, she lets her finger trace the inside of his palm, feather-light. His hand curls around her touch.

“...you’re not nothing,” she confesses. And maybe it’s more awful because it’s true.

He kisses the back of her neck, and it sends a crawling shiver down her spine. His hips press forward, and she wonders if he is going to initiate anything-- because he’s wondered and wanted and thought about it for years now, and never acted on it. Nothing further than kissing, than the occasional and experimental touch.

She wouldn’t dissuade him. There’s many ways to give into passion, into the dark, and sex could be one of them. Despite herself, Kira _ wants  _ him, this man who is supposed to embody everything she hates.

But he only nudges one of his stupidly long legs between hers, buries his face deeper into her neck and hair.

And like that, they fall asleep.

\--

Kira wakes up on the floor of her cell, ancient dirt flooding her sense of smell, but still feeling the warmth of his body on her skin.

\--

He comes to the cell early to bring her food. She’s not surprised, because he knows her and knows her anxieties about missing meals. Because he’s softer than her in many ways, and this is one of them.

He kneels beside the cell, sliding some vegbread and soup between its wide bars. She takes it, ripping up the bread into large chunks and nearly inhaling it. Ben sits with his back resting against the bars, a defeated air about him.

“I know what you saw,” he finally says, after she’s nearly done licking the soup bowl clean. “And why you’re really here. You broadcasted it in your sleep.”

“...I figured as much,” she admits.

“I think you’re wrong,” Ben says.

“I’m not.”

“You’re uncertain. I sense your doubt.”

Her eyes flicker to his profile, still cast in those long shadows. “Maybe. But I still  _ know _ , Ben. You do too.”

He exhales, body slumping. “And if I agree? What then?”

She sucks on her thumb, trying to clean soup from it. He watches the motion with heavy interest.

“The Sith had a rule,” she states, knowing he will understand her implication.

“So you just become the Master,” he says with a scowl. Disappointed, she realizes. He is disappointed in her. It’s a strange feeling-- because someone has to care, to be disappointed.

Kira drops her thumb from her mouth, before slowing shaking her head. “No.”

Ben watches her intently, and so she elaborates.

“I was a slave once.” Her eyes meet his, and she doesn’t doubt they look yellow in this light. That he senses her sincerity in  _ this,  _ if nothing else. “I won’t be making others.”

“Then what will you make?”

Kira leans forward, handing him the bowl. She makes sure their fingers brush when he grabs it from her. That her touch lingers against his skin.

“Something new,” she promises. “And I’d like for you to do it with me.”

There’s a slight tremble underneath her touch. But then he tears his hand away, leaving just as quickly as the last time.

\--

For the next two meals, a droid delivers her food.

\--

That night, she appears directly in his bed. He is not asleep, sitting up with his hands folded behind his head.

“I need you to go,” he says, angry and upset.

She moves until she kneels behind him. After a moment, she rests her cheek between his shoulders, wraps her arms around his stomach. Feels his breath go in and out.

“Then...come with me.”

Ben knows how hard the request is for her to make. Knows how she feels about asking people to  _ stay.  _ Maybe that’s why he doesn’t cast her away, immediately. Maybe that’s why he only stays stock still and breathes against her weight at his back.

“I can’t think like this,” he manages.

“Do you need to?”

“You know what you’re asking.”

She closes her eyes. She knows. She wonders if she would do the same for him.

“I have two more days,” she finally says. “Until the Supreme Leader knows I’m gone.”

“And my uncle returns,” Ben finishes cynically.

“Yes.” She won’t lie. The timing of her surrender had been calculated from start to finish.

Her arms tighten around him.

“If…” Kira breathes in. He smells like sweat and something earthy, maybe ink. “If you don’t, the next time I’ll be here is to kill you. Because he wants me to.”

He tilts his head up, looking at something on the wall. “You wouldn’t do that.”

She closes her eyes. “I would.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“The Supreme Leader...knows me. My weaknesses.” Her grip tightens.

“Is that what I am?” He asks bitterly. “Your weakness?”

Lightly, she kisses a ridge on his spine. “You could be part of my strength.”

“I’m a Jedi,” he growls.

Kira waits for silence to fill the hut. Then she asks a question that she knows will tear at him.

“Are you?”

He shrugs her off so he can turn, so they kneel face to face on this lumpy old bed.

Kira bites into her lower lip.

“Are you a Jedi as much as I am a Sith?” She leans forward, her forehead resting on his shoulder. “Light and Dark don’t have to...to  _ be  _ the way they are. We can change it. We can  _ stop  _ it!”

“Only if I abandon the Resistance,” he says in a low voice. “Convenient for you.”

“Let’s end them all, then. The First Order. The Resistance. The Jedi. They’re all just--just  _ chains. _ ”

He doesn’t say anything, but his hand comes to rest on the back of her neck, his fingers slide into her hair.

Kira doesn’t blink, her eyes burning as purpose enters her voice.

“I won’t be chained again. By anyone.”

She pulls away from him, her eyes meeting his.

“Not even you.”

\--

The next morning, he’s staring at her on the other side of the cell wall.

“I love you,” he states.

“I’m sorry,” she replies, meaning it.

“Don’t ask me to do this.”

Her fingers reach out between the bars to trace his cheek.

“I wouldn’t ask you to do anything you didn’t already want, Ben.”

He closes his eyes.

\--

When he leaves, she waits a few hours before she lifts up her hand once again. The barred door to her cell flies forward, crashing violently into the wall across from it. Kira walks through the dust and debris calmly, casting out her senses and letting them guide her. 

On the surface, there’s a transport with enough fuel to get her to Cantonica. Her lightsaber is in a drawer by Ben’s bed. Ben’s hut is outside the temple, nearer to the tarmac.

She moves.

\--

Ben doesn’t seem surprised when the door to his hut opens. He turns, shrugging on the rest of his Jedi robe. Kira doesn’t look at him at first, hand flying out and calling to her weapon. The lightsaber shatters through the nightstand, landing in her open palm. She visibly relaxes as soon as the hilt falls into her grip.

Then, she takes a few steps forward. Her eyes meet his.

“Come with me,” she asks for a final time.

The hand not holding her lightsaber stretches out. Toward him.

Ben looks at the hand. At the promises it holds. Of what he promises in return, if he accepts.

Kill Snoke.  
Replace him, and his uncle’s Order, with something new.  
Break her chains. Break his.

“Please,” she whispers.

He swallows hard. Finally, his fingers interlock with hers.

Her eyes sting, and she smiles at him.

His face is unreadable, but she senses his feelings in the Force. The yearning. The anger. The love.

So she says the only thing she can. “Let’s go.”

They walk into the dark together.


End file.
